“They made way too many of these,” Maurice says, flopping the coin down on a felt surface with dozens of others a customer brought to his Callow Pawn & Jewelry shop Monday.

The coin is worth its weight in silver: $12. But Maurice, a lifelong coin collector, is willing to pay $15.

“Sound good?” he asks, receiving an enthusiastic nod from the seller.

All day long, Maurice makes on-the-spot calls: What to buy and what to sell. At times, he must also weigh the plight of the person standing before him.

The pawn shop business can be the only chance at a small loan that allows some people to get by, in exchange for what can be a precious artifact as collateral. Many times, they’ll return to get it back once troubled financial waters have passed.

“He’s a good judge of character,” said John Buesch, a longtime friend. “For some, he was their last possible salvation for getting money to eat, money to pay the rent.”

CLOSE

Dick Maurice is retiring after a four-decade career on Callow Avenue.
Josh Farley, josh.farley@kitsapsun.com

Maurice is retiring on Friday, closing up the shop on Callow Avenue that he has run for two decades. It’s hard for him to say goodbye both to his current shop and to the legacy in business he’s had in Bremerton's Charleston neighborhood for four decades.

“I think it’s kinda pulling on his heartstrings a bit,” Buesch added.

Maurice’s career began in manufacturing, building wings for Boeing 747s in Everett and commercial refrigerators in Caracas, Venezuela. But his family ran Mexican restaurants in Puget Sound and, when interest in a Bremerton location developed, Maurice jumped at the chance. The El Camino, at 610 Callow Ave., was born in 1978.

It took grit and long hours to run the restaurant and lounge. Maurice also began packing in crowds for the restaurant's popular comedy show and other entertainment. The El Camino stayed open until 2 a.m., and Maurice’s only respite was a hot tub and a few cigarettes to wind down before getting some shuteye and returning to Callow by 10 each morning.

“I don’t believe in the word 'stress,'” he said.

Maurice, the coin collector, took a serendipitous path to opening a pawn shop. On the popular comedy nights at the El Camino parking became a challenge. People who parked in a nearby business's lot started getting their cars towed.

So Maurice bought the adjacent property.

He ran a card room there in the days before the prominence of tribal gaming. He started Callow Pawn and Coins (he later replaced "coins" in the name with "Jewelry") in 1998 and closed the restaurant a few years later. The 610 Callow property has had successive tenants – the Ponderay, Hot Iron Grill and Chet’s Place – but none endured nearly as long as the El Camino. It now sits empty.

In the pawn industry, there are people looking to sell and buy, and there are people looking for a loan. If the pawn business is a kind of “poor man’s credit card,” as friend and goldsmith Garry Thompson described it, Maurice is one of its more generous lenders.

His business provides both happy and sad commentaries on society. At times, a loan can be lifesaving for some clients. But Maurice has also watched thousands of wedding bands come through his doors, a sign of a sea of dissolved marriages.

There have been countless clients who’ve unloaded sad stories on Maurice; many times, he’ll make them a small loan, even if they have little of great value to offer as collateral. He often held items offered as collateral past the 90 days he’d agreed to.